How Mark Cavendish would have relished a Tour de France day like this: a flat-ish 180km through central France with the potential for a bunch sprint to the line.
Stage 11 of this Tour is the final flat ride before the hard Alpine ascents. The day begins in the university city of Clermont-Ferrand before the riders wind north and then east to Moulins, a small town on the Allier river. There is still some climbing to be done including three category-four hills along the route, but any breakaway is likely to be reeled by those teams with dedicated sprinters eyeing their only opportunity for a stage win between the two rest days.
Cavendish, of course, will not be competing for that historic 35th stage win after crashing out of the race on Saturday. The man who beat him to the line the day before, Jasper Philipsen, will be favourite here again having already collected all three victories on flat stages in this Tour.
Who can possibly challenge him? Among the pure sprinters, Caleb Ewan and Phil Bauhaus have both come close to winning stages already this Tour and will try to get amongst it once more. Fabio Jakobsen continues to struggle with his injuries from a crash in Nogaro and it is unclear whether he can compete for victory. Dylan Groenewegen has Tour stage wins on his palmarès but hasn’t always been able to position himself for the sprint finish in this Tour so far.
And then there is Wout van Aert. The Jumbo-Visma superstar has been trying desperately to clinch a stage, and probably should have won stage two in San Sebastian when Victor Lafay was allowed to escape from the final group and couldn’t be reeled in. Van Aert was controversially squeezed out of the race to the line on stage three in Bayonne, and was beaten in the stage-eight sprint in Limoges by Mads Pedersen.
Van Aert is clearly hurting at what has been a pretty unfortunate set of near misses. He will not want to go away from this Tour empty handed, even if there is the potential consolation of playing a key role in Jonas Vingegaard’s yellow jersey defence, and this could be an opportunity to finally get on the board with what would be a 10th career win at the Tour de France.
The Belgian was given a scare yesterday when he was told of rumours that he had to leave the Tour for the birth of his second child – his wife is due to give birth to a baby boy shortly after the race. But he confirmed to the media that he is not going anywhere yet. “I just did a quick call to my wife to check if everything’s alright and luckily she’s doing fine. So I don’t know where it’s coming from but I’m in the Tour for hopefully as long as possible.”
For those at the top of the general classification fighting for the potential podium positions, like Vingegaard and Tadej Pogacar, it is a day to stay out of trouble and keep fresh for much bigger challenges ahead.
Stage 11 route map and profile
Stage 11 map— (letour)
Stage 11 profile— (letour)
Start time
The stage is set to begin at around 12.30pm BST and is expected to finish at around 4.30pm BST.
Prediction
The breakaway should get reeled in here and the obvious answer is Jasper Philipsen. But let’s be bold and predict someone to beat him: Caleb Ewan looks threatening but this might just be the day Wout van Aert finally gets across the line before the rest.
